It's like grad school all over again!

For some reason, I think I will always associate a solder and hot glue fix with the grad school days of hacking together a solution when in a pinch.

You probably don't care anymore, but I am now confident that the power problem is fixed. Come use the netbook and see! It's almost fun, even. (Though I did pull the motherboard again just to make SURE it wasn't the wobbly bit!) I discovered that it was the actual plug that was wobbly. Therefore, I HAD to make a careful incision to take a deeper look.

Wobbly, because the part attached to the white wire was supposed to be attached to the silver pin receptacle. Yet, they were snapped apart... just so that if we wiggled the cable enough we could maybe make it charge.
So I slapped a piece of copper wire on both parts to bridge the gap, then started with a fresh part of the power cord to put it all back together.Honestly, I felt kind of like an artist when making the joins clean and tight.
And we're live again! No more cable fiddling (until the next time someone goes running through the house and catches the power cord like a trip-wire).

p.s. Did you notice the embellishment with electrical tape? Yeah, we can do fancy, too.

We're still here, I promise.

We've sort of been off the radar for the last few days--we're hosting our friends' five (5!!) boys for a few days this week while they're in Albuquerque looking for a new house. I sort of feel like we're enabling them to move...which goes way against my plan to keep them here. (Would you have lived in Massachusetts forever if we'd said no, Dionne? Because if that's the case, then the answer is no. Emphatically.)

It's been fun to have five extra sons around the house--and Ian has been In HEAVEN to have five more brothers. We've only had to apply two band-aids and treat poison ivy once. (There are also two suspected spider bites, but I'm skeptical. It is black fly season, after all.)

Note to all: Colored bubbles are a little light on the "bubbles"

and a little heavy on the "colored." Consider yourselves warned.

Blake had his physical therapy appointment today and I thought I'd document it. Marissa is his physical therapist, and she is wonderful. Ian sometimes asks why Marissa plays keep-away with Blake's toys...and I explain that she's trying to make his body strong by making him really work for it. Ian, however, (who thinks Marissa is wonderful, too) is pretty sure that Marissa is being paid to keep Blake from getting his toys.

Happy Mother's Day!

Living in a house full of boys does have its perks on Mother's Day, that's for sure.

After Blake woke up and had his breakfast in bed, Joe brought me mine.

Deeeeeeeeeee-licious.

And after church (and after Joe got his Mother's Day nap....wait...what?) we hiked around the Mill Pond Reservoir. That's right, we have a pond right here in our neighborhood. It's not like we live in hick-ville, MA, either. We live in suburban Boston. We live in a regular neighborhood. But despite all that, here we are with a pond smack in the middle of the suburb.

It's amazing.

^Oh man, this boy is phenomenal. HE. IS. A. PHENOMENON.

This one is fabulous, as well. He is an outdoors boy, hands-down.

Many, many rocks were thrown/skipped/kicked into the pond.

He has quite an arm, that boy.

...And then I got in on the action.

Obligatory outstretched-arm-photo.

Ian loves to explore.

...and explore.

...and explore.

He was super excited to find a tree "with a belly."

Have you ever seen a more handsome man?

Something about being Joe.

There's something about me that says "If there's a problem, chances are I can fix it." This is a good thing most of the time, but is not so great others.

For example, I love having a Toyota Corolla, because it's extremely conducive to me digging in for the occasional rebuilding the starter or pulling the radiator to de-gunk it. (I didn't say extremely easy, just extremely conducive. It's got elbow room!)

As another example, sometimes a girl wants a guy to just listen to her problems and validate her feelings. (Note, this is not the right to assert that you can fix anything, because sometimes a girl wants to just have the listening ear.)

And I must admit, I have a grand-old-time working toward fixes sometimes. Case in point? Designing an undercarriage for a chicken coop last weekend with my father-in-law. I was loving life there in the aisle at the tractor supply store, then down in the project shop in the basement trying to remember the equation for cutting speed of steel as a function of tool diameter. Nope, couldn't remember it, but found out that it needed to spin a bit faster with the 5/16" drill bit through life experience.

Here's a joke. When people were asking what we were up to, I told them we were installing wheels on the chicken coop for the local coop races. I thought that was great. At work today, I told some folks at lunch and they had a great laugh at the idea. They want to come see the race, if it ever happens. If it were to happen, we have some other friends that would have to come and be the jockeys at the race, since they are Coopriders! HAHAHA! Lovin it!

As an aside, Ian has this book called "My Dad Can Fix Anything," which I am flattered that he believes it. He has been known to assert this casually in his conversations at play-dates. He holds the bar pretty high for his old man.

So here's tonight's project. Remember the other week Jen took my picture with the laptop taken apart? We had a loose DC power jack in our netbook that makes it so the cord has to be "just so" in order to charge. Such is the result of repeated tugging/tripping over/abusing a power jack. On that night, I discovered that there were no loose solder joints, and that everything looked intact. So I made a note of the part number and had a manufacturer in China send me a replacement jack. {Cocky me thought I could whip out the soldering iron and slap a new one on pronto!}

Having taken the machine apart recently, that wasn't too much of a hassle. I was a bit perplexed at one hangup, though, until I remembered that screw under the yellow tape that says "Warranty Void if Tape is Removed or Torn." The yellow tape that I tore to take the machine apart the other week.

And there's the culprit! Gotcha now.

I had the old iron cooking the 7 connections on the jack for like 30 minutes. I've got a cheapo' iron, and there were 4 anchoring contacts, then three current-carrying electrodes. Yeah, once you get one hot, the others are cooled. I could tell that I was probably heating up the whole mother-board worth of ground lines, and was praying throughout the process that I wasn't cooking the machine. In the end, I got it off, with only a slightly torn PCB (printed circuit board) and slightly more worried that I had torn a copper lead that is critical to getting those precious 19 volts routed properly.

Getting the new one on went a little faster than getting the old on off, since I had the mounting holes empty and clean. Now the jack is installed and looks charming there. The big question, then, is 1. Did I get everything put back properly, and 2. Did I solve the problem?


Answer 1: Yes, everything got put back together, and the computer booted up nicely. I sighed a big relief that the electrode was still functional. Thank goodness. Otherwise, you can bet Jen'd be hankering for a new laptop. How else could we stream two Netflix shows at once?
Answer 2: The laptop still seems to have a loose connection, (though not AS loose as before), evidenced by switching between battery mode and power mode periodically even when plugged in.

THEREFORE: The repair that I did was probably not necessary and just was an exercise in spending time being geeky, money for electronics parts, and brain cells melting a product known in the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects (or other reproductive harm). I guess we'll have to go the easy route and just buy a new power brick.

Here's our recap of our birthday weekend in Maine.

My grandfather turned 80 on Monday.

It's always been fun to be exactly fifty years behind him.

(you do the math)

Between the two of us exists exactly one-half century.

And I don't think he looks a day over 68. I told him so.

To back up a little bit, Ian went to Grammy's house last Wednesday, and the rest of us joined him there on Friday night. (Friday was also my 8th anniversary, which will be celebrated this weekend. Though, on our way to Maine, we stopped at Becky's Diner in Portland for an anniversary dinner. It's pretty legendary to the locals, and Joe and I went there for breakfast the day after our wedding. It's been a nostalgic locale for us ever since!

^Our first errand on Saturday was to the tractor supply store to get some materials for moving the chicken coop (more on that later). Normally, I wouldn't really find a need to bring myself to the tractor supply store...however, it is chick season, and we had to go see them. Cheep Cheep!

You don't have to buy the whole tractor at the Tractor Supply Store. You only have to buy the seat. I think that's a very affordable option, don't you?

Ahhhhhhh. Cousin love. Here we have my cousins Libby, Andrea, Owen, Kelsey, and my sister, Natalie, reuniting. (They see each other all the time...but you know...cousin love is awesome.)

As always, much game-playing ensued. Clockwise from the I'll-take-it-for-the-team-so-I-can-post-this-picture picture of me are: me, Emily, Isaac, Sean/Blake, and Megan. We're playing the new expansion to Bohnanza (the bean game). If any of you are familiar with that expansion, let me know--I'm curious to know what you think of it!

So. Much. Food. It was fun, fun, fun.....I wish you could have had the quiche that Mom was making in this photo. It was everything that is right with the world. At that moment, I was chopping fruit for what seemed like 2 hours. (Though, in reality, it very well could have been two actual hours.) There are few things I love more than hacking up a pineapple, though, so a good time was had by all. (Except the pineapple).

Annnnnnnnnnd, it's the annual outdoor-ing of the grapefruit tree. I thought it was a little early (read: cold)....I sort of think my grandmother has a death-wish for this tree. It's just a theory, though. Someday I'll tell you the story of this grapefruit tree. Suffice it to say, it's survived more than a decade of Maine living. (And not many grapefruit trees can say that.)

After sending Joe to dump the fruit scraps into the compost, this is how I caught these two....Ian was scavenging a mango seed, and Joe clearly thought that my strawberry hulling left far too much waste.

Blake spent the majority of Monday outside (you'll see his sunburn later...oy!)...but he loved every minute with his aunts, uncle, and cousins. Every whim and wish was attended to (I can't say so much about that now that he's home...)

Scott washed a lot of dishes. He also served as welcoming committee.

Soon after guests started arriving, Ian thought he'd spruce the place up a bit. He found some forsythia clippings from the flower arrangements and decided to plant them next to Grammy's hosta. (After Grammy spent the lion's share of Saturday spreading and smoothing mulch.) Oops.

It was pretty, though. And a sweet effort.

Isn't my cousin, Emily, beautiful? Fellas, she's single!

So much glorious food. Someday I'll tell you what it took for me to acquire those croissants.

Ian was super excited to eat, can you tell?

And heeeeeeeeeere's the birthday boy!

I had suggested putting 80 candles on the cake. I was overruled. I did, however, inform my grandfather that I'm putting my foot down on his 85th birthday and there's nothing he can do to stop me!

Okay. The coop. This project involved hours upon hours of engineering on the part of Joe and Scott. The coop needs to be moved to another part of the yard....it wasn't as easy as it looks. I found engineering equations on the chalk board when I woke up on Sunday morning. Really. The result is quite impressive.

If you've ever thought to yourself, "Self, I wonder what the bottom of a chicken coop looks like," here you go.

We decided to play one more game before driving off into the sunset on Monday evening. Blake joined us (with his sad, sad sunburn---which is better now). He loved this balloon, and wouldn't let it go. (That was a sad moment....oy.)

...And Ian decided he wanted to play on "team grammy," and so he did! He was very good at rolling the dice and filling in squares. (He, too, is a fan of balloons. But who can blame him, right?)

**Edited to Add**

And here's the clan all together. Fantastic, no?